"This opening scene is a 'zerologue'—presumably, a speech act without voice—and it’s only in the next scene, by a 'formica lake,' that a voice seems to enter at all." Ailbhe Darcy on Andrew Zawacki • Reconfigurations

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"Ignoring the stuff about ‘Major Poetry’ (is Major Poetry in the same army as Captain America?) you are still left with the word ‘problematic’." Tim Atkins on Martin Corless-Smith • Onedit

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"There is no shortage of ice cream cones in either of these poets." D.H. Tracy on Frederick Siedel and Robert Hass • Poetry

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"Aside from Lowell, who dominated postwar poetry in America in much the same way that Hughes dominated it in Britain, America’s few pluses, for Hughes, include his discovery of Emily Dickinson, “America’s greatest poet, without a doubt.”" Bruce Bawer on the letters of Bishop, Lowell, Hughes and Ginsberg • The Hudson Review (scroll down for pdf link)

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"The apparently confining poetic structure of this stubbornly persisting form may prove one of the most accommodating poetic shapes." Annie Finch on the sonnet • Contemporary Poetry Review

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"Burns' central insight is that the spiritual, the social, the sexual, the natural, the political and the humorous are overlapping human realms, not separate or competing ones. To pretend otherwise is a lie." Don Paterson • The Guardian

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"We listened to old-fashioned nature poetry that evening, while sipping an algae-green concoction called an Olympic Cocktail, whose recipe had been given to us by the Irish sex shop clerk next door." John Cotter on August Kleinzahler • Open Letters Monthly

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"Later, there was a group reading in Manchester, even as an unbuttoned United having won the European Cup were paraded through the city on an open-topped municipal bus." Michael Hofmann on Ian Hamilton • Poetry

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"Human beings . . . have a near mastery of mechanical and artistic products, but they continue to fail at their internal inventions: loves, desires, ambitions." Michael Baltasi on Ciaran Carson • Chicago Review (pdf)

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"I have never cared for any of the big Isms because they tell you little about aesthetic value . . . [W]e read books because of their complexity, intensity, their ability to be reread." Marjorie Perloff in conversation with Alcir Pécora • Sibila

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"[L]ike a pinecone next to a Kmart manager." Tao Lin • Poetry

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"A word like 'innovative' is owned by the university. There is no avant-garde." Alice Notley • Signals

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"“No ideas but in things”. This might be the most mis-taken piece of good advice in contemporary creative writing, and used to hammer every abstract word out of every poem brought to workshop. But Williams’ poetry is very alive to ideas (just as Basho is very alive to the individual’s emotions)." Philip Gross on Basho and William Carlos Williams • Magma

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"Like other Greek intellectuals considered 'troublemakers' by General Metaxas, Engonopoulos was drafted and sent to the front. Following a particularly gruesome battle on 13 April 1941, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and held in a work camp until his escape, when he wandered 'over half of Greece on foot.'” George Kalamaras on Nikos Engonopoulos • Rain Taxi

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"The way he would lean across a podium to his audience, remove his glasses, dangle them in his hand—thrown slightly whomperjawed from his double-jointed elbow." Mary Flinn on Larry Levis • Blackbird

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"He is a classic instance—with his London publisher—of the writer’s virtue that Auden compared to a valley cheese: produced locally but prized elsewhere." Bernard O'Donoghue on Thomas McCarthy • The Irish Times

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"[T]he net Donne describes knits the eternal soul to the temporal body, the metaphysical to the physical, . . . macrocosmos to microcosmos." Lianne Habinek on John Donne • Open Letters

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"A liking for crossword puzzles helps." PK Page • Northwest Review

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"For all the so-called connectedness of a blog, nothing unites—author and reader, reader and world—more than a poem." Allison Glock • Poetry

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"What does risk encompass in a poem?" Five responses: Raymond John de Borja, Peg Boyers, Adam David, Angelo Suarez, and Naya Valdellon • High Chair

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"For me, poetry has no point in existing if it’s not to be a prompt or aid to political and ethical change." John Kinsella • Poetry

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"This method of taking material from existing sources and then rewriting or simply changing the 'meaning' by the shifting context caused by juxtaposition has been around for a very long time now but Lopez proves there is still plenty of life, as well as variety, in this form of processing." Steve Spence on Tony Lopez • Stride

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"[W]riting gives me more active engagement with the world than almost anything else at all." Q&A with Robert Creeley • Smartish Pace

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"[A]ngry denunciations of the stupid audiences, ignorant critics, dumb fads, inept rivals, and general decay of poetry and taste in his time." Robert Pinsky on Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick • Slate

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"The Oulipo are, like, so hot right now." Simon Turner on Matthew Welton • Hand + Star

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"The world always remembers poetry. Sooner or later." John Steen on Jean Daive's Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan • The Oxonian Review

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"it is our inability to grasp a moment as it occurs completely, before it becomes the something else of memory." Alyssa Pelish on Donna Stonecipher's The Cosmopolitan • Powell's / Rain Taxi Also: Rachel Harkai • NewPages And: Shevi Berlinger • Contrary

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"Once you’ve heard one sassy woman talking back you’ve kind-of heard them all." Miriam Gamble • Verse Palace

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"The 'unique perspective' of this poetry 'allowed him to see history with a lover’s eye, and desire with a historian’s eye.'” Keith Taylor on C.P. Cavafy • Boston Review Another view: John Herbert Cunningham • The Quarterly Conversation

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"Hopkins’s poems aren’t symphonies, they’re the loud, strange, almost hypnotic sounds the orchestra makes warming up in the pit." Steve Donoghue on Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins

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"Isn’t a poem at least as alive as an enterprise, or a factory?" Michael Hofmann • Poetry

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"I was eager for the chance to select Canadian poems so as to show our current poetry in a very attractive light to anyone who enjoys reading."AF Moritz • The National Post

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